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VOLUME 130, No. 354
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US prepares to expel
more asylum seekers
BY COLLEEN LONG
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
Border officials are aiming to
more than quadruple the number
of asylum seekers sent back over
the southern border each day, a
major expansion of a top govern-
ment effort to address the swell-
ing number of Central Americans
arriving in the country, a Trump
administration official said Sat-
urday.
It was the latest attempt to
State College’s Sarah Koenig talks ‘Serial,’
possible Happy Valley podcast and more
Journalist Sarah Koenig works in her State College office in 2015. Many fans of her podcasts don’t realize she lives in State College, she says.
BY SARAH PAEZ
spaez@centredaily.com
STATE COLLEGE
When Sarah Koenig isn’t trav-
eling for her “Serial” podcast,
she can be found in a rectangular
office in an unassuming building
in downtown State College, pep-
pered with papers, books and a
friendly dog named Bruno.
Since “Serial” season 1 —
which took a critical look at the
trial and conviction of Adnan
Syed for a 1999 murder — aired
in 2014, Koenig has emerged into
the spotlight, her show widely
seen as a blueprint for the pod-
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MORE INSIDE
Spring surge of migrants stresses border
facilities 5A
ease a straining immigration
system that officials say is at the
breaking point. Hundreds of
officers who usually screen cargo
and vehicles at ports of entry
were reassigned to help manage
migrants. Homeland Security
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked
for volunteers from non-im-
migration agencies within her
department, sent a letter to Con-
gress late this past week request-
cast era.
The notoriety means Koenig is
much more recognizable in pub-
lic, a “super weird” development
for the relatively private journal-
ist, she told the Centre Daily
Times in a detailed interview this
month. Many of her “Serial” fans
didn’t know she and her family
have lived in State College since
2008, she said.
“I feel like I have to be more
careful sometimes in public in
case somebody recognizes me. ...
I have to make sure I’m being a
good tipper,” she said with a
laugh.
But the popularity of “Serial”
had some upsides, she said. It
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YOUR WAY. SUNDAY, MARCH 31, 2019
ing resources and broader au-
thority to deport families faster,
and she met with Central Amer-
ican and Mexican officials.
The efforts are being made
while President Donald Trump is
doubling down on threats to
shutter the U.S.-Mexico border
entirely, a move that would have
serious economic repercussions
for both the U.S. and Mexico but
wouldn’t stop migrants from
crossing between ports.
The Trump administration has
also moved to cut direct aid to El
Salvador, Guatemala and Hondu-
has inspired organizations to put
money behind podcasts, and “a
lot of good journalism has come
out of it.”
Koenig and her producing
partner Julie Snyder recently
wrapped the third season of the
Peabody Award-winning podcast,
which chronicled one year inside
the Justice Center Complex in
Cleveland, Ohio.
She gave a talk Friday at Penn
State about that season. Orga-
nized through the McCourtney
Institute for Democracy in the
College of the Liberal Arts, the
talk was part of a conference on
race and criminal justice, in-
stitute spokeswoman Jenna Spi-
2C Comics
6D Obituaries
3D Opinion
ras. The State Department said in
a statement that it will work with
Congress to suspend 2017 and
2018 payments to the trio of
nations, which have been home
to some of the migrant caravans
that have marched through Mex-
ico to the U.S. border.
The aid affects about $500
million in 2018 funds and several
millions more from the previous
fiscal year, the Miami Herald
reported, citing unnamed offi-
cials. The money goes to pro-
grams that deal with violence,
poverty and employment.
A congressional delegation
visiting El Salvador on Saturday
said in a statement that they
were “extremely disappointed”
about the aid cut and said they
plan to “push back.” “The presi-
dent’s approach is entirely coun-
terproductive. It will only result
SEE ASYLUM, 5A
WILL YURMAN Photo provided
nelle said.
“It’s one thing to study crimi-
nal justice from an empirical
perspective, but something else
entirely to be embedded in the
system for a whole year,” wrote
Spinelle in an email. “We think
that the conference’s attendees
and the general public can bene-
fit from hearing firsthand about
the people and problems Sarah
and her team encountered while
reporting the third season.”
PATH TO ‘SERIAL’
Koenig came to radio by way of
a 10-year stint as a beat reporter
SEE KOENIG, 3A
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Candy
replacing
smokes
in prison
trades
BY SAMANTHA MELAMED
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
PHILADELPHIA
Freddie Nole gave up smok-
ing in 1979, after a bout of
pneumonia put him in the
hospital. But for the next 40
years, he always kept a pack of
cigarettes or a pouch of Kite
tobacco in his cell – just in
case.
“You’d hold on to Kite, if
you could afford to get it, until
something came along that
you wanted, and that would be
the currency,” said Nole, who
was paroled in January after a
half-century in prison. Tobacco
was the answer for obtaining
everyday necessities, as well as
for managing exigent circum-
stances: “I had friends I would
try to keep out of the black
market: I could give them
something so they could not
succumb to the borrowing. So,
I always had cigarettes on
hand for the purpose of ex-
changing. In prison, debt could
be very problematic.”
Such is the informal econo-
SEE SMOKES, 3A
State Reps
close down
lobby room
in Capitol
BY MARC LEVY
Associated Press
HARRISBURG, PA.
It happened without any
warning: The “lobbyist room”
at the back of Pennsylvania’s
House of Representatives
chamber was closed and is
now off limits to lobbyists.
For decades, lobbyists could
sit there in a handful of com-
fortable chairs, watch floor
proceedings on TV, print out
copies of legislation and send
messages to lawmakers in the
chamber through a House page
who was effectively assigned
full-time to this task during
floor sessions.
The room was, perhaps, a
vestige of a clubbier time dec-
ades ago when lobbyists were
said to have mingled on the
floor with lawmakers during
voting sessions, and representa-
tives from the oil and railroad
industries were known as the
SEE LOBBYIST, 3A
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David Reddecliff, clerk of the state House of Representatives, stands in the room in
Pennsylvania’s Capitol once known as the “lobbyist room,” at the back of the House
chamber, Wednesday in Harrisburg, Pa. Reddecliff closed the room to lobbyists this year.
FROM PAGE 1A
LOBBYIST
51st and 52nd senators.
But no more: The
House’s chief adminis-
trative official said he de-
cided last year it is not
appropriate and shut it
down before even telling
its regulars.
The move comes after
Gov. Tom Wolf hammered
the Legislature while on
the campaign trail last year
to adopt the kind of gift
ban he imposed on the
executive branch.
Still, it seems to signal no
broader effort to hold lob-
byists at arm’s length, and
the perk wasn’t dramat-
ically different than lobby-
ists’ accommodations in
some other state capitols.
To some extent, the
room is an anachronism.
Lawmakers didn’t always
enjoy getting a lobbyist’s
summons through a House
page. The extra open door
leading into House cham-
bers created a security head-
FROM PAGE 1A
KOENIG
at various print news out-
lets.
“I had this weird path
where I started at my local
weekly (in Long Island)
and went to Russia for
three years,” she said.
While in Russia, she
worked as a reporter for
ABC News and researcher
for the New York Times.
After returning to the Unit-
ed States, she covered
statehouse politics and the
courts for the Concord
Monitor and the Baltimore
Sun.
But her interest as a daily
beat reporter waned over
the years.
“I was too new at it and I
lacked the imagination to
kind of figure out a way
forward that didn’t feel like
I was just doing the thing I
was supposed to be doing
and, like, sort of often
feigning interest,” she said.
Landing at “This Amer-
ican Life” in 2004 meant
she could pursue a unique
brand of storytelling that
would later put her on the
map with “Serial.”
THE MAKING OF
SEASON 3
Though each season of
“Serial” probes a large,
existential question about
justice, some of Koenig’s
reporting style and process
has changed over the
course of the show.
The third season, said
Koenig, explores the ques-
tion: “How does the justice
system infiltrate people’s
lives, in a usually really
horrible way?”
While the first season
had a clear story arc, Koe-
nig said that in season
three, “we had to really
extract any narratives we
sort of created.”
Koenig and fellow re-
porter Emmanuel Dzotsi
had “no organized meth-
od” when they began their
roughly 18 months of re-
porting. Koenig said she
told Dzotsi, who moved to
Cleveland for the show, to
sit in the courtrooms and
talk to interesting people.
Through hundreds of hours
ache. There are other places
to get copies of bills. Floor
proceedings can be watched
from a fourth-floor gallery
or even on a cellphone. And
lobbyists can simply text or
email lawmakers now, said
House Clerk David Redde-
cliff.
“I’ve always felt uncom-
fortable having a special
ornate room at the back of
the House chamber … des-
ignated a ‘lobbyist room,’ ”
Reddecliff said. “And to
me the optics – in 2018 at
the time, now it’s 2019
when we pulled the trigger,
and said, ‘hey, no more’ – it
looks like they have just
one extra special thing that
they can use.”
Some lobbyists shrugged.
Others complained bitter-
ly, saying it had been a
crucial means of access to
lawmakers, particularly
when trying to help hold
support together, or peel off
support, during debates on
of recording, characters
and storylines started to
emerge, she said.
In particular, Koenig
said, stories would emerge
by virtue of the journalists’
being there. One day, Koe-
nig was talking to an at-
torney for a man named
Erimius Spencer about an
unrelated case when the
attorney received a text
message with photos of
Spencer’s beaten, swollen
face. Those photos formed
the basis of a key storyline
about police brutality in
“Serial.”
“That just seemed like a
great opportunity,” she
said. “Like, ‘Oh, here I am
at the inception of a thing;
this has just happened.
Now I can watch how is the
system going to deal with
this.’ ”
Once all the interviews
were conducted and the
main court cases finished
up, the production team
had to structure the narra-
tive around the overarching
questions. While they
weren’t reporting stories
week by week, they were
still producing stories while
airing finished episodes in
September 2018.
“I never really know the
story I’m telling until I’ve
made it,” said Koenig of
the process. “... Until I
write it, I don’t know what
it is. Or what I even think
about it.”
WHAT MAKES A
COMPELLING PODCAST?
For Koenig, any story she
pursues has to be interest-
ing to her, she said. “Oth-
erwise, it’s just not going to
work.”
As a producer for “This
American Life” and co-
owner of Serial Produc-
tions, Koenig travels fre-
quently “to live inside
whatever world (I) choose
for a while,” she said.
“I like being in a world
where I’m learning a lot
and where I have genuine
questions that I think can
be answered,” she said.
The components that
make up a really good
MARC LEVY AP
closely fought legislation.
Lobbyists keeping tabs
on floor action could hand
a business card to a House
page who would deliver it
to a particular lawmaker on
the floor with a request to
step outside and talk. The
room and its perks were
open to the public, too,
they contend.
Reddecliff and the lobby-
ists’ trade group, the Penn-
sylvania Association of
Government Relations,
said they are working on
new accommodations, like
an audio and video feed of
floor action outside the
chamber.
In some state capitols,
lobbyists are relegated to
hanging around in corri-
dors for a chance to button-
hole lawmakers. California
and Connecticut have TVs
in hallways showing live
floor proceedings.
But lobbyists in Mississip-
pi have taken over a former
committee room, with a
coffee machine and occa-
sional food spreads. “Room
210” is now an inside-the-
Capitol synonym for the
podcast to her, said Koenig,
are a good plot, surprises
and interesting or idiosyn-
cratic characters. And “be-
ing delighted is really help-
ful,” she added.
“By and large I would
say, I tend to develop a real
fondness for the people
that I’m interviewing, even
when I cannot stand the
things that are coming out
of their mouth,” she said.
STORYTELLING IN
HAPPY VALLEY
Although she has lived in
State College for 11 years,
Koenig has yet to do a
podcast based in the area.
However, after Penn
State was named the No. 1
party school by the Prince-
ton Review in 2009, she
and several other produc-
ers produced an hour-long
special on “This American
Life” called “#1 Party
School.” That profiled a
weekend at Penn State.
When the Sandusky child
sexual abuse scandal broke
in 2011, Koenig reprised
part of the party school
episode and produced a
segment on life in State
College during that time.
She has also reported on
the Marcellus Shale discov-
ery and subsequent gas
drilling industry, which has
affected parts of central
Pennsylvania.
“I would love to (do a
project based in State Col-
lege), because I would love
to not be traveling all the
time and just be home
more,” she said. “Because
it’s bad; I leave home too
often.”
When the story about
Penn State student Tim-
othy Piazza’s
hazing-related death broke
in 2017, during production
of season three, Koenig
said she thought about
dropping everything to
cover it.
Right now, the “Serial”
team has several projects in
the works, one of which
will probably turn into
season four, said Koenig.
DIGGING BENEATH THE
SURFACE
With “Serial” season
one’s premier five years
behind her, Koenig said
looking back at the story of
lobbyist corps there.
In some states’ cham-
bers, such as Ohio’s Senate
and Louisiana’s House and
Senate, lobbyists can get
close enough to lawmakers
on the floor to speak to
them or send messages to
them through pages, privi-
leges also extended to
members of the public.
In Oklahoma, lobbyists
could use Senate parking
spaces – until the Senate
president pro tempore
banned it earlier this year.
Until as late as the
1970s, lobbyists could hang
out at the rear of House
floor, behind a brass rail-
ing.
They were then bumped
to a larger room in the rear
of the House and, in the
1990s, to the smaller room
that is now locked. The
Senate, meanwhile, offers
no such accommodation.
But lobbyists are far from
shunned in Pennsylvania’s
Capitol.
Lawmakers’ regular fund-
raisers held a stone’s throw
from the Capitol are largely
attended by lobbyists. A
couple of lobbying firms also
provide campaign manage-
ment services.
And lawmakers allow
themselves to accept gifts
of any value from lobbyists,
whether dinners, trips or
tickets to golf courses,
sporting events or concerts.
There’s some speculation
in the Capitol’s corridors
about the timing of the
move. Revenge? Lead-
ership worried about keep-
ing votes together on con-
troversial legislation?
Not according to Redde-
cliff. Rather, he said he
gave it a hard look after
discovering that a page was
dedicated full-time to fer-
rying lobbyists’ business
cards during floor sessions.
“I don’t think that in
2019 the taxpayers should
be providing a copier, a
computer, a TV, a room
and a person in the form of
a page to do your bidding,”
he said.
Adnan Syed sometimes
feels like a part of the past
that doesn’t belong to her.
“This weird thing hap-
pened where it became so
big and popular that ... it
feels very surreal to me,
that it’s not real, that it’s
not something I did,” she
said.
Koenig hasn’t watched
the new HBO documentary
series “The Case Against
Adnan Syed.” She said it
was “not a shocker” that it
came out when it did, con-
sidering that season one
spawned dozens of spin-off
podcasts about Syed’s case
and “Serial” itself.
Each season of “Serial”
has improved upon the last
one, she said, with the
team building on its know-
ledge and tackling bigger
questions.
And even though some
listeners may have thought
they were starting a true-
crime podcast with Season
1, Koenig said that was not
quite her intention.
She wanted “to have
people take a second and
just be like, wait, is our
(criminal justice) system
working ... is this how we
want it to be working? Is
this level of scrutiny on a
murder charge enough to
convict someone and send
him to prison for the rest of
his life?” she said.
Koenig and her fellow
producers have carried that
brand of questioning
through seasons two and
three. As a former beat
reporter, Koenig said she
hopes people think critical-
ly about arrests and sen-
tencings in the news.
“I just want us all to take
a moment and start think-
ing about these cases in a
deeper way ... and just
consider that there’s stuff
going on that we don’t
know,” she said.
“So little of our system is
about finding out the truth
of what happened. It’s just
not what the system is set
up to do ... for a long time I
didn’t understand that
about our system,” she
said. “If we’re all OK with
that, if we voters are all
fine with that, fair enough
... but what’s upsetting is I
think most people just
don’t know.”
FROM PAGE 1A
SMOKES
my of prisons, where tobac-
co has long functioned as
extralegal tender, traded to
settle a gambling debt,
outsource laundry service,
hire personal security, tip a
barber, commission a por-
trait of a loved one, or
purchase a coveted fresh
vegetable swiped from the
dining hall.
But smoking, which is
more than twice as preva-
lent among inmates as it is
in the outside world, is
about to be extinguished in
Pennsylvania state prisons.
As of July 1, tobacco prod-
ucts will be banned, the
Department of Corrections
announced last week
(though vaping will persist).
The DOC says it’s a
move toward a healthier
future. Last year, inmates
spent $8 million on tobacco
products. In 2017, cancers
of the lung and larynx,
chronic pulmonary obstruc-
tion and heart disease
accounted for at least one-
third of deaths in Penn-
sylvania state prisons.
“Even though smoking is
not permitted in cells,
someone being housed
with a smoker, they’re
definitely going to benefit
from tobacco-free,” said
executive deputy secretary
Shirley Moore Smeal.
The DOC will offer
smoking cessation classes,
including free nicotine
patches for participants –
though, Smeal acknowl-
edged, in the past partici-
pation in such programs
has been low. She noted
that the DOC already oper-
ates four smoke-free facil-
ities, and said complaints
are rare.
Even so, some staff are
worried about violence
from tens of thousands of
irritable inmates all in
simultaneous withdrawal.
“I am concerned that this
will put officers in a more
volatile situation,” Jason
Bloom, president of the
Pennsylvania State Correc-
tional Officers Association,
said in a statement. “We’re
concerned that there is not
enough resources in place
to assist inmates with to-
bacco withdrawal. That
presents safety issues for
our officers. With assaults
on our officers being a
major concern right now,
this must be addressed.”
The impact of the policy
on the informal economy
within prisons might seem
similarly unpredictable. In
fact, the role of the cigarette
as the gold standard has
evolved already, said Ab-
d’Allah Lateef, who spent
three decades in prison and
now is an organizer with the
Campaign for the Fair Sen-
tencing of Youth.
Back when a pack cost
$1, it was just the right
compensation for a sand-
wich that had been liber-
ated from the dining hall,
or a load of freshly washed
and pressed clothing. (In
the industrial laundry, he
said, white shirts and socks
were likely to come back a
dingy beige.)
“You know what it’s like
to wear a fresh clean un-
dershirt, even when your
clothes are so drab and so
filthy?” he said. “When you
can wear something that’s
sparkly white and maintain
that, there’s a certain self-
value that comes from that,
to the extent you can still
look presentable as you
would when you were free.
You take that sense of
self-value wherever you
can get it.”
These days, cigarettes
start at $6.78 per pack,
which is significant for
inmates whose pay tops out
at 42 cents an hour. That’s
one reason the market
favors packaged candy,
cookies or chips. “It’s mov-
ing and gravitating toward
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other commodities, simply
because tobacco is so ex-
pensive,” he said. He be-
lieves inmates trading in
cigarettes these days are
likely gambling or buying
drugs and other contra-
band – not daily inciden-
tals.
Last July, inmates at
Graterford Prison in Mont-
gomery County moved to a
new institution, Phoenix,
that’s smoke-free, resulting
in the rapid decline of the
cigarette economy.
In the transition, Nole
said, a $5 pack of tobacco
that survived the journey
fetched $60 worth of com-
missary in Phoenix. “It was
like they would do almost
anything for a cigarette –
stealing increased, the
bartering of things in-
creased. Guys went to the
hole for smoking. Guards
were going through it, too,
because they couldn’t leave
the premises to smoke.”
John Young, on the other
hand, actually requested a
transfer to another smoke-
free institution, the Chester
state prison, a few years
back.
“I kept saying I’m going
to quit before I came out of
prison. But then I had ex-
cuse after excuse,” said
Young, who spent 43 years
in prison before being pa-
roled last June. “I decided
to go to Chester and give
up smoking, and I haven’t
looked back.”
Still, it wasn’t that ciga-
rettes were hard to come
by at Chester, he said.
“It’s a jail. You can get
anything in a jail,” he said
with a laugh. With a tobac-
co ban, “you’re creating a
whole new black market.”
No matter what prisoners
are trading, they’re in-
curring some risk of run-
ning afoul of rules, like a
blanket prohibition on
lending and borrowing.
Still, Michael Gibson-
Light, a sociologist who
undertook an ethnographic
study of one prison’s in-
formal economy, found that
even when cigarettes lose
favor, new currencies arise.
At the prison he studied,
the ramen packet had be-
come the preferred denom-
ination. At other institu-
tions, he said, inmates
trade in Little Debbie Ho-
ney Buns, or canned fish.
He does not attribute
that shift to restrictions on
smoking, or to the rising
price of cigarettes.
Instead, he said, there’s a
common theme at prisons
across the country: “The
quantity and quality of
meals has decreased. More
and more, prisoners are
expected to supplement it
themselves, to buy food in
the commissary. Food
purchases have been nat-
uralized as part of the pri-
son experience. To me that
became the key to the
story: less about tobacco
and more about the food.”
Gibson-Light said even
men who disliked the soup,
or who were concerned
about its high sodium lev-
els, still stockpiled ramen
savings accounts.
One current Phoenix
inmate, who declined to be
named for fear of disci-
pline, said now that tobac-
co is out of the picture,
inmates haven’t settled on
a single currency.
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